


breathing exercises i will never figure out

by thnderchld



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Borderline Personality Disorder, Heavy Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-12
Updated: 2015-04-12
Packaged: 2018-03-22 11:48:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3727717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thnderchld/pseuds/thnderchld
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Investigating Jet and the world behind the boy with five siblings and a devilish smile, who was all too willing to bring down everyone else if only to see a brighter dawn.</p><p>trigger warning for self harm and mental health issues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	breathing exercises i will never figure out

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on the author's own personal feelings and things.

The fire that burns up his village leaves him, lonely, an eight year old boy with sparks that occasionally settle on his skin. He doesn’t let himself cry as he watches his home burn to the ground, his family with it, until the sun rises the next morning.

_

He meets Smellerbee first, a girl two or three years his junior, in the woods beyond their homes. She’s small, but her mouth and wit is strong. It doesn’t take long before he starts calling her his sister. She is crucial to his evolution, though he never would have expected.

Then they find Longshot, a quiet young child with a steady hand. They are one for staying away, finding solace in an arrow between the curve of their fingers. Sibling number two.

A year later Smellerbee finds a man, the guardian of a seven year old boy calling himself the Duke; and a boy and girl called Naato and Wang-Li.

And thus Jet finds himself a second family, one that he prays will stay.

_

The Duke idolises Jet, and Jet loves it. Knows it. Duke takes up almost permanent residence on Jet’s shoulders or at his side, begging to touch his hookswords and Jet flicking the boy’s helmet gently.

And, yeah, Jet does stupid shit.

Jet’s knees are scraped from a fall from the trees. He’s vaguely aware that someone- is it Smellerbee, or his voice rendered into someone he cares about?- is yelling at him in a voice too loud to soothe.

“The Duke went out looking for you! And you were just tending to a damn _knee?_ You thought it was sprained? _The Duke was lost and god knows that it was_ your _fault.”_

__

His fingers grip clumsily into his own knees, he swallows his emotions again, only the people who know him best can see the slight tremble in his shoulders as he presses his chin into his knees, eyes shut.

The voice goes on in his consciousness and somewhere his wound opened up again, but all he’s aware of is the fact that if the Duke hadn’t come back it would have been _his_ fault.

-

Jet is anxious, but what else is new. Smellerbee is watching him through her suspicious eyes. He’s covering by crossing his quivering arms, his breath still through many years of practise. Smellerbee has always been one for observation, however, and she maps out his movements.

“The- Do you think they’re okay? That they’re going to be okay, I mean.”

It’s just the two of them at that moment, save the Duke who is currently sleeping in a corner. Smellerbee is half-heartedly skinning a rabbit-boar, paying attention to her brother far more than the strips of skin peeling beneath her hands.

“They’re going to be fine, Jet.”

“Yeah! I know that! My plan was perfect! If they die then it means my plan has failed!”

Smellerbee knows him, though. Of course she does! She was his first sister, the first sibling, his second in command. If anyone is going to notice a flaw in the armour, it’s going to be her. She drops the boar on the floor, suddenly.

She strides over to Jet, whose hands are now at his sides, gripping the fabric of his pants. He’s staring at the ground, blinking ferociously. “Jet. They’re going to be fine.”

She wraps her arms around him, her bloodstained hands gripping the cloth.

He doesn’t return her hug but his shaking increases, and she can hear the intake of breath.

  
“Thank you,” he whispers, and he feels less alone.

-

“Pipsqueak used to tell me about something called the Avatar!” the Duke chirps around the campfire, tight against Jet’s side. This is Jet’s favourite time of day, the sunlight is getting more and more vibrant, but also less painful as it crawls into its hiding place beyond the mountains.

He is grinning, the embers humming orange in front of him. “When I was younger, someone told me about the last two. The last one was a…firebender called Roku. He disappeared at the beginning of the war. He was a traitor. _Kyoshi,_ on the other hand. She had the right idea. Roku was a puss- a wimp. Kyoshi was strong. Always be Kyoshi.”

“Yeah!” Wang-Li calls from the opposite side of the circle, raising an invisible goblet. “To Kyoshi!”

The Freedom Fighters raise their fists to a god-like entity who left long ago. Jet laughs loudly at the feeling that rises inside of him.

The Duke is watching him and nodding as he digests the information. Perhaps later that night Jet will lie in his bed with the covers dragged beneath his knees, dissecting anything that could’ve harmed the child.

But for now, all he feels is family.

-

In the past, failed plan was the equivalent of being thrown in jail, busted, running and running. He never thought that failure could lead to death.

He feels numb; the branch beneath him feels like it will collapse at any moment. Would that even be a bad thing? Jet isn’t so sure anymore. All he really knows is that they went off this morning with five and came back with three.

If you asked Jet what his emotions are in that moment, he won’t respond. He doesn’t know. There is nothing inside of him- He is just a canvas who no one wants to paint.

Smellerbee shifts the branch beside him. It could only be her, it will always be her who tries to bring him back. She was his first sibling.

“Jet. Are you okay? This is hard on you, isn’t it?”

He wishes she didn’t know him in that moment, wishes she had never seen his face streaked in freckled sunlight.

“I’m fine. They were war casualties. I don’t need you here.”

Shadows struggle for purchase on Smellerbee’s face. No matter how much he wishes he didn’t know her, he just proved it, because only a sibling could hurt her like that.

“Jet. That- why would you- siblings-”

“I don’t need them!” Jet says again, a thrust of voice and anger and hatred. “They need me! I don’t have any room for them! I can’t think about them!”

Smellerbee turns away, a sob swelling in her throat. “You’re allowed to let others look after you, for a change.”

“Not now! What about the Duke? If I am weak, who does he have? You, Longshot, Pipsqueak, the Duke. Everyone! If I am lost then who’s going to help you?”

The girl sucks in a longsuffering breath. “Jet. I think you need to…let me-”

“Leave! Please leave! I can’t see you right now!”

Smellerbee reaches up a hand and wipes her eyes with the back of it, sniffling slightly. “Okay, Jet. I can’t see you right now, either.”

His sister takes to the wind, and when he’s alone, he finally lets himself collapse. Jet’s shoulders tremble and then cave. He is a statue of paper and matches set alight, because the only feeling he can compare right now is the sense of burning, flame eating up his heart and soul.

-

The first time Jet ever puts a hooksword to his own skin, he’s certain he’s going to die. The blood wells to the surface, and beads just above the slice. He whimpers once, he wants Smellerbee there, but he can’t- won’t allow himself to put that fear, or that guilt, upon her. They’ll have to find him here first, bled out. It’d look like a suicide- he’ll have to make it look like the accident it is.

‘ _Selfish. You were right. We_ don’t _need you.’_ He hears this in his head and he knows in his heart that this is the truth.

 _That’s okay. You don’t have to need me,_ he tries to think. _I’ll be gone before you can blink._

  
Jet ponders over this situation in this head again and again, until he realised that it had been almost two hours and he is as alive as ever. Some might consider that a shame, but on this day he’s just glad that Smellerbee doesn’t have to hurt.

The way it hurts is strange, because for just a moment his heart steadies its beating as it sends blood through his arteries to sew the veins back together.

 _One time,_ Jet thinks, _this is the only time. I’ll never have to explain this to my children, or niblings, when they ask where I got my scars from. Besides, how could I be so selfish? Destroying my body after my efforts to conserve it? How dare I._

__

Jet slams his fist into the ground so suddenly it sends quivers up his spine. He presses his hand to his wrist to swipe the beads of red away.

“Smellerbee,” he calls, just under his breath, not loud enough to hear. She’s not there, but he needs his sister. But they need him more.

When they go hunting, he misses the animal. On the blade he can picture his own blood, the slice of his skin, and he has to fight the urge to collapse on himself.

-

It’s better, now. He doesn’t need to feel anything, anymore. He thinks his soul has frozen over, somehow. Jet and Smellerbee have made up, and not even she can see the disturbance of his mental mess. She finds it odd, though, how his pain tolerance has risen.

Life goes on, they eat, sometimes he dabbles in kissing people from villages. Every creed is united in their admiration of rebelliousness, especially in the hands of a fifteen-year-old Earth Kingdom boy.

The Avatar returns. The man of myths and legends, the one who had betrayed them, who had all but vanished into the reputation of myths and lies, returns.

When Jet looks at the boy, only twelve years old (well, 112, but _logistics_ ), he doesn’t see Kyoshi. This boy is the youngest Avatar to know his role. Oh, yeah, and he’s an airbender.

Katara is brimming with life and hope, a combination that makes Jet yearn for things he can’t have. So he decides to call it a crush, and of course she sees delight and forbidden and perfection in the curve of his smile. (when the war is over, when all is said and done, then Katara will understand.)

And thus the teensy waterbender takes him in her hands, brings him to submission in the depths of the forest, fucks him hard in the shadows of the river. _This_ is something the two can bond over.

Before he knows it, it’s all over. The river brims in the hollow of a town and Katara hates him. He wonders what anything’s worth. After she is long disappeared from the forest, he keeps trying to wring out his shirt after it’s long since dried.

-

The Fire Nation have more information on him, now, and so the boy and his family pack for Ba Sing Se. The theft of some passports is the last one Jet hopes to do.

They travel to the docks and Smellerbee goes through examination. She bites her lip at the word _male_ written on the page. Jet can’t let that happen to the Duke, he realises. After a word with Pipsqueak, many teary farewells, Jet prays that he will see his whole family again, someday.

-

He meets a boy his age, called Li. The sixteen-year-old draws his attention, partly the splash of burnt flesh around his left eye, partly the abrasive chop of his words. So when Jet says ‘you’re an outcast, like us’, the thoughts that race in his head are of possibility, of beginnings alongside a boy who is also scarred, though in a different way to Jet.

They steal komodo-chicken together, and Jet feels a different array of feelings than he felt from Katara. He keeps catching moments, catching little fragments of time; the slant of milk white over the quick manoeuvre of Li’s hands, the twitch at the side of his lips, the delicate way he has of chewing the meat as if he’s coming home.

Jet feels as if something inside of him has tripped over its own feet, and he slams his hand into the table to make himself look away. Smellerbee glances over a second after he grabs one of the bowls of rice.

Jet keeps his head down, doesn’t dare look at any part of Li. He tries to control the beat of his heart. His fingernails dig into the leg, tearing the flesh from the bone.

When the old man’s tea boils, goes hot as if by magic, Jet almost feels relief.

-

Smellerbee is starting to worry about him again, but he knows he can’t have that. He starts going to the teashop, watching the scarred boy boil his tea with spark rocks. Jet slightly hates it, having to spend hours watching the slightest twitch of Li’s fingers, the concentrating pucker of his lips.

Jet is frozen watching him move, the tea turning cold. He craves caffeine, the inability to submit to such things as sleep. He grips the cup and lifts it to his lips, the cold liquid freezing in his chest. He takes this as proof that there is nothing inside of him, after all.

Eventually Li comes over, and Jet regrets everything he thought about the boy. He feels as though the very image of Li is pushing him swiftly into despair, and he can’t have that. “Li.”

“Jet?”

Jet plasters a fake grin on his face, as if his goal was to be uncovered. “Uhuh. Remember me?”

“Kind of hard to forget.”

Something is troubling Li, that much is evident. He maps Jet’s features, collects them in his conscious. Jet thinks to ask for them back. But he doesn’t.

“So…are you enjoying your tea?” Li mutters, reaching up to rub a place behind his ear.

“It’s great! Do you…have any coffee?”

“No. We don’t have that much money.”

“Ah.”

Jet taps his fingers against the wood, fighting against the way Li’s gaze has lassoed his. He submits and lets himself cave to the honey-warm trap he’s built himself. He bites his lip and mutters, “What’s something with a fucktonne of caffeine.”

“I’ll ask my uncle, if you want?”

“Bless your soul.”

Jet’s head drops to the table and when the waiter returns, Jet is jostled awake by the push of a shoulder. It feels like years have gone by, but Li is looking as beautiful and young as ever, surrounded by hazed sunlight, and Jet feels inches away from thrusting the knife across the table straight through his hand.

But he can’t stop looking. There is only Li and light and his face smeared by dust.

-

When he struggles, when he wavers on the edge of self-control, that’s when he goes to the tea shop; dares to glance upon the familiar slight of fingers or the peculiar gleam of rich yellow in the tea server’s eyes.

 _Despite what they said,_ Jet thinks, _That’s the only gold any of us will find, here in Ba Sing Se._

__

He falls into this routine, now. Sometimes he thinks he catches Li watching him; fingers curling slower, breath coming lighter, paused for a moment in time. Jet can’t move in those short periods of time and alas, it happens more and more often.

One day he’s poised; curled over the table like a statue, watching Li from beneath his eyelashes.

Then Li comes over, and Jet tips his head back to let warmth rush over his face. “Hi there,” he mutters in the guttural way that lack of sleep has acquired.

“Hello,” Li says. “You’re back? Is it caffeinated Chai? Again?”

“You know it.”

Li nods but just as he’s turning, Jet asks, “When’s your lunch break?”

Li stops, and glances over his shoulder, eyes fascinatingly curious, lips pressed with concentration. “Ten minutes,” he says after a minute, and walks off to make Jet’s tea.

When he comes back, lunch is almost upon them. He leans closer to Jet before muttering, “Why did you ask about my lunch break?”

“I was wondering if you’d like to check out a place with me?”

Li blushes, “Sure. We’ll wait for my uncle to turn around the sign.”

Minutes pass and when Iroh turns around the sign Jet stands up so abruptly that his knees bump the table and he feels the setting of a bruise, premature echoes against his skin.

Li glances at him from across the shop as he exits the back room.

They leave the building together, Jet trying not to let the rapid beating of his heart distract him.

On terms of distraction, Jet’s gaze keeps falling to Li’s hands. They look warm, he thinks. He laces his fingers with his own, trying to pretend that they’re Li’s. After a few seconds he notices that Li’s looking at him, too.

“What part of my face are you looking at?” the Earth Kingdom boy asks.

“You have long sleeves for weather like this.”

Jet shrugs. “We took everything we had to Ba Sing Se. There aren’t any short sleeved ones.”

Li nods, turning back to face the road. “So…where are we going?”

“Checking out this sandwich place just around the corner.” Jet glances up at Li’s face, his stomach fluttering lightly. “So…can I hold your hand? For like- uh- for a second. Like we don’t want anyone to see, but yeah I can’t stop thinking about holding your hand. I sound like a creep.”

Li smiles at him, and Jet has never seen anything like it. The warm, gentle unfurling of the boy’s lips, complimenting the lovely bright honey in his eyes. Red races across his cheeks.

“For a second.”

Jet grabs his hand, delighting in the rush of warmth that filled him. He colours, squeezing it as tightly as is comfortable. Suddenly, Li’s shoulders are relaxing and Jet takes the moment to realise that the other boy is leaning into his touch. A shrill of pride rears its head in his belly.

Before he realises, Li is pulling his hand away and interlocking his own fingers with each other. “Sorry,” he shrugs. “It’s Ba Sing Se.”

They get duck sandwiches and they sit at the edge of the river, enjoying the solitude.

After the last sandwich has long disappeared, Li mutters, “My shift begins again, soon.”

Jet looks at him, pouting. “That’s a shame! But, first. What did you, uh, think?”

Li smiles widely so that his right eye crinkles. “I’d love to do it again.”

Before he realises what he’s doing he’s leaning forward, brushing his lips over the pale gold skin. Li folds their fingers together, and tilts his head just the slightest bit, letting Jet’s touch fall to the corner of his lips.

Then he pulls away and stands to his feet. “Thank you,” Li says.

  
He walks himself home. Jet doesn’t even dare to move, to breathe; almost, for fear that all of this will vanish from his body.

-

They’re in Jet’s apartment eating dinner, when Jet kisses Li for the first time, lips lingering, caught in warmth. He almost sobs in delight when Li doesn’t pull away. His hand comes to rest against the cusp of Li’s head, caught between the strands of dark hair, delighting in the softness.

And Li doesn’t stop, either. He gasps and craves and pulls just as much as Jet pushes. He tastes of dust and tea, but there’s the faint taste of charcoal on his tongue.

The day after, when they wake up from Jet’s bed, a sticky mess of two boys with no idea of where they’re going, Jet wraps himself, intertwines himself with Li. He doesn’t let Li leave for many minutes after, peppering kisses over his…something’s brow, arms engulfing warmth.

And he’s relieved that, when they both finally emerge from the bed, Jet’s upper body bared for the light, Li asks no questions.

-

It becomes apparent that Li sleeps better when Jet’s by his side. It’s because of this that they perfect the art of silent footsteps (although Jet wasn’t too bad already), catching wartorn moments, halcyon days, everything ablaze in the wash of the Earth Kingdom sun.

And each morning one of them leaves again, but never does the light touch their faces.

-

One night Jet is woken by the muffled sobbing of his star-eyed companion. Li is quiet about it, small and gentle as he always is around Jet. Jet extends a hand, and Li freezes for a moment at the hand upon his shoulder, not as warm as his own, never as warm as that. But the curve of his fingers holds some power of its own, as if swept by candlelight.

Jet and Li look at each other, gold and dark, opposites of what they’re expected to be. Then Li inches closer into Jet’s arms, his head pillowed by Jet’s chest. The boy of wind and hookswords curls his fingers into his companion’s hair, Li’s sobs coming harsher and harsher the more he lets himself go.

“Why- Why didn’t he want me, Jet? Why did he never want me? I really, really tried! But he didn’t want me back after all.”

Jet doesn’t know what Li’s talking about, but he holds him tighter, tighter, always tighter, and lets him fall apart in the midnight.

-

“Where is my brother? I want him back.” Smellerbee is leaning against the wall, arms crossed. Jet has slept in on this Sunday, and he rolls over, groaning into his pillow.

“Fuck off.”

“Stop pretending you’re asleep, Jet. I know you better than that.”

Jet blinks through the light and dust, splintering it across the room. He feels the scratches of the mattress against his cheek.

“Wha?”

Smellerbee strides over and sits on him, Jet squeaking slightly. “Cut thecrap, Jet. You’re always leaving at night! I wake up and find you gone! Why?”

Jet pushes her off of him and rolls away from her grasp. He’s laughing now as his body falls off the mattress and onto the floor. “Business deals.”

“Yeah you’re a secret janitor superhero.”

“Close! But no.” Jet springs up, grinning. Smellerbee glares at the burst of height. Then she steps over the mattress and grabs his arm.

“Tell me what it is, brother!” And then she curves her fingers beneath his arm and he flinches, and she recognises her power. She runs them back and forth and he shrieks, yanking away as much as he can.

He tries to get her off by leaning over and ruffling her explosion of hair. Then he steps forward and they engage in a warfare of hands and fingers. Jet laughs rich and loud to the summer morning. “No! I will not submit! I am an immortal being and you can’t touch me!”

He jumps away from the lash of her fingers and grins with delight. “I am faster!”

But as he speaks she grabs his shirt and makes him yelp with something others would mistake for fear. She backs him against the wall. “Tell me or die!” she giggles.

He places his hands up, smiling like a man under fire. “I surrender! Fine, I’ll tell you if you- gah!- let me go-” he squeaks just as Smellerbee stills her hand.

He glances around. “You know that boy?”

Smellerbee raises an eyebrow. “ _That_ boy _?_ And yeah. You didn’t shut up about him before but now you’re…quieter than you’ve been for a while.”

“Yeah well. I’ve been seeing him.”

“No need to tell me about your-”

Jet nudges her playfully. “I’m _not_ telling you about my sex life, I promise. Just using darkness as a good thing, you know?”

Smellerbee grinned wide, and stepped back. “Riiight. Darkness-”

“Shut the _fuck_ up!”

“Never!”

-

Jet finds himself trembling, again. This always happens. The euphoria of Li has washed out a little bit, and now he is alone with his thoughts in his apartment while his only ( _only,_ it is only that now. there is no one left, but did they even have a chance?) sister is out shopping with Longshot.

He stomps around the apartment, his heart full of rage at everyone. Every word that’s ever been said to him seems to ring in his ear: faint neutrality, warped into dismissal. His fingers throb at his sides, then come up to hold his face. With a burst of rage he thrusts his fist down onto the table. Jet grunts in a slight exhale of pain.

The boy crumbles and he is digging his fingers into his legs, gasping into his thighs, trying and failing to cry.

“Jet?”

He turns around and sees Li. The boy is on the precipice of the house, watching Jet’s armour draping to the floor. The revolutionary tries to pick it up again, but his hands are too scraped and bruised to lift a finger.

  
“Please leave,” he chokes. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”

Li disobeys him, and walks forward, leaning at his side. “Jet. You’re bleeding.” He takes Jet’s hand in his, tries to fill Jet with all the warmth in his pacing burning heart. He lifts the appendage into the air so that the red trickles over the pores of his skin, ruby red, bursting between peeling pieces of skin.

“I don’t care.”

Li rests his other arm around Jet’s shoulders. “It might…it might get infected. Then it would hurt.”

“I don’t _fucking care._ I don’t care about anyone, I’m an awful person-”

Li pulls a handkerchief from his apron pocket and proceeds to wrap it around Jet’s hand. “No,” he whispers, and rests his head against Jet’s shoulder, eyes closed, trying to keep as close to Jet as possible.

“I don’t u-u- _understand._ Wh-why would the wo-orld be considered such a good place when _I’m here._ ”

Li’s fingers pull through the knots in Jet’s hair, and he tries to keep his mind open, he is silent and listening. Jet is starting to break into weeping, his face is streaked with liquid and when he reaches up to wipe it away he sobs, “Please leave, I ca-an’t put you _through this,_ it hurts to have you see me it hurts to see you please just please just leave for your own good, I need you, I need you to leave.”

Li shakes his head and pulls Jet into his lap, and though Jet is taller by quite a bit, he presses his face to Li’s chest. His sobs start to break through Li, quivering and broken and not even his anymore. “I don’t trust myself to leave.” _I don’t want you to hurt alone. God knows what that’ll bring._ They both hear it and Jet grips Li’s shirt, pushing himself as far as he can get against the boy he lo- cares about.

“They didn’t deserve to die, it’s my fault that they- they _died,_ and I couldn’t even _feel anything!_ I thi- Smellerbee hates me because of that, she must do, I _deserve_ her hatred, they all hate me! They said they didn’t need me I know they _don’t._ Why aren’t I dead, everyone would be better, you’d all forget me, all the people I care about-” A sob rips through his body and he doubles forward.

“Jet, no one hates you, Smellerbee doesn’t hate you, she worries about you-“

“Fuck that!” Jet’s fist strikes the ground again. “She should hate me! Why doesn’t she hate me! I should be hated! The only thing I’ve ever known is hatred! I hated the Fire Nation, I hated the people who left me behind, I even hated _them_ for a while, so why can’t they just give me what I’m due! Why can’t they hate me like I deserve to be!”

Li lowers his head, resting his face in Jet’s hair. “No, no. You don’t deserve hatred. You’re good and kind and I care about you.”

“I-I’m so so-orry. I deserve to be dead. I’m sorry that I’m not. Then it would be fair. I should burn for what I’ve done. I should be dead,” his voice starts to lull, his sobs starting to rest, his body starting to droop with tiredness. His crying stills after a while.

“No. You don’t deserve to die, you’re going to live, you deserve that. You deserve all life has in it. I love you. I do.”

But Jet isn’t even sure if he’s hearing things correctly. His ears are ringing with the aftershocks, and it soon becomes evident that he’s fallen into sleep. But even after his breathing calms, Li doesn’t leave. He simply rests besides Jet, his head across Jet’s chest, and listens to his lover’s beating heart.

-

Somewhere, somehow, Li really _is_ a firebender. Jet is soaking wet one day, caught out in the rain, and Li warms him up by letting the heat in his hands soak through his clothes, makes Jet feel something other than the shivering ice of Ba Sing Se rain turning into hypothermia. “You’re not even from the colonies, are you?” Jet mumbles. “You didn’t speak like us from the beginning. You were different. Your accent, I mean.”

Li presses a kiss to the back of Jet’s neck. “No. I am, unfortunately, Fire Nation. By no means supportive of their actions, anymore.”

“You must miss it, though? I won’t get mad at you if you say yes. I did bad things when I lived in Xau Fi, bad things happened to me, but I still miss it. There’s not much I want more than to go back. But I have come to terms with the fact that I must find a new home.”

Li reaches around to hold Jet’s hand, running his thumb over the knuckles, letting in the roughness of the scabs on his knuckles.

“I love you,” Jet says, so suddenly it sends a shockwave through them both. Li jolts slightly, thumb stilling, mouth suddenly agape.

“You- you do?”

“…Yeah. I think I do.” Jet chuckles. “Now we can say who said it first.”

Li shakes his head. “I said it first.” Jet shuts his eyes then.

“I thought I was making it up that I heard. I thought you were just trying to stop me from crying. It worked, but I sure as fuck didn’t believe you.”

Jet turns around and leans up to press a kiss to Li’s soft lips, presses his fingers into Li’s hair. Li kisses him for a moment, then pulls away. “I wasn’t lying. I wasn’t just trying to stop you. I was telling the truth.”

Jet grins and says, “Thank you.”

-

“Jet?” Li asks, and reaches for the other boy’s hand one night when the moonlight falls weakly over their bodies, clothing them in liquid radiance. Jet rests his head against the other boy’s chest.

“Mmmm?”

“Can I tell you something?”

Jet nods.

“My name’s…not Li. Not really. I just had to tell you that.”

“Of course it isn’t,” he mumbles, and presses his breath over Li’s chest. “What is it? Who are you?”

“Who I am and what my name is are two different things. One of them I am still figuring out.”

Jet giggles. “You sound like your uncle. What’s your name, that’s what I want to know. If you don’t want to tell me then I am okay with that. You can tell me everything in your own time. Or anything. As long as it isn’t _really_ bad. Like you murdered someone innocent deliberately.”

Li smiles, slides his fingers around Jet’s shoulder so that warmth fills Jet’s chest literally and figuratively. “Thank you. My- my name is Zuko.”

Jet swallows any other words then, pushes up to meet his lips, tangles his hands in his- lover, boyfriend, something’s hair. “Zuko,” he says afterwards, testing the name over his tongue, between his teeth. “I like it. I love Zuko.”

The smile that breaches Zuko’s face could make supernovas weep.

-

“You’ve never _really_ seen my arms or chest in the daylight, have you?” Jet mutters. He’s resting in the lull of his blankets, watching the sunlight flood the shape of Li-Zuko-’s body. Jet likes the sight of him, and reaches for his warmth. Give him the sun, and he’ll still choose Zuko.

“Must be quite a sight,” Zuko chuckles, grinning into the pillow that’s now sort of his. The blankets ride down just enough so that the sunlight makes his exposed shoulder look like it’s glowing.

Jet is silent, before saying. “Ask me to show you, sometime. You won’t have to show me yours, but just- You’ve bared yourself in more ways than one to me. I just- they’re there for you to know. I don’t have a secret name. But I have this.”

Now Zuko is quiet, before he wriggles closer to Jet, resting his head on Jet’s chest. His companion’s hand comes to rest against Zuko’s cheek. “Because of the heat. That’s why you never showed me. Plus, you didn’t feel it was important. That was what you said.”

Jet laughs, in a heart-catching way, before sobering. “Yeah. But I-I lied about the unimportant aspect. It’s- I don’t like people seeing them. For reasons.”

Zuko nods knowingly. “Yeah. You have seen my chest once. You didn’t ask questions- I’m glad, by the way. You’ve always been- very protective of your upper body. It’s usually the opposite. As in, more protective of the lower half.”

Jet makes a sound of affirmation, and makes to stand. He does so, so that Zuko can see everything, every detail that makes its way across his arms and chest. There are scars- decades worth on him, more there than the amount of years he’s lived- that are criss-crossing across his flank, pale and pink and purple.

Zuko shuts his eyes for a moment, and then opens them again. “Who- How did those happen?”

Jet’s hands twitch at his sides, itching to cover himself. For so long it’s only been his eyes that gazed upon his wounds. Not even Smellerbee has seen this side of dark. Tears well in his throat. “I did them. Except for these three, they’re all by my own hand.”

He forces himself to look at Zuko, and Zuko looks crestfallen. “How long?”

“I was fourteen the first time it hurt enough to do this.”

There’s a lot of them. In some areas they’ve collected enough so that one cut crosses another. Jet’s heart feels like it’s bursting.

“I-I understand, a bit. Unfortunately.”

Jet nods and keeps watching Zuko, whose hands are probing every dent of his armour. “Yeah.”

“But. Jet- Some of those look fresh.”

He sighs, and slips back between the covers, sitting so that Zuko can still see it. _It._ That’s what he calls his body.

“Zuko, you surely know how hard it is to stop.”

Zuko pulls Jet to him, presses a kiss to his temple. “Let us not speak of this. Not right now. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

-

“My sister’s in the city,” Zuko tells him one afternoon as Jet leans against the window, looking out onto the street below. The sun is drooping lazily over the city. Jet still feels claustrophobic.

He looks at Zuko, frowning gently. “What does that mean?”

“Azula would- I think she’s going to try and take me home. To the Fire Nation.”

Jet walks over to the firebender, and curls his fingers around his- his _boyfriend_ ’s wrist. “Will you go?”

Zuko is silent, mapping Jet’s features as if trying as hard as possible to commit him to memory. “She’s very persuasive, my sister.”

Jet’s frown deepens and he looks away. He shouldn’t- he _can’t_ feel betrayed like this. He has no right. The one he loves is going home and this should be cause for celebration but for some reason it’s _not._

__

“It’s okay,” he whispers, the words wooden and stiff on his tongue, tasting like wads of cardboard melting on his tongue, against his gums, beneath his teeth. “If I were given the chance to go home, I would. I hate this city. I will hate this city as long as I have memory of home.”

Zuko leans up, presses a kiss to Jet’s lips. “I will find you again.”

Jet smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “I know.”

-

Weeks later, Jet’s in the belly of the lake, dying for a bison and a twelve-year-old, the spirit of whom’s forefather Jet had called a pussy, a long time ago. His fists are raised and he’s facing Long Feng, tears blurring behind his eyes. _If I die, how will Bee tell Zuko? Where is he? I need him._

__

When the boulder comes hard, slamming into his abdomen, he’s sent sprawling. But he feels nothing, just the jarring, and he thinks, _At last I did something right._


End file.
